Multi-agent reinforcement learning for intrusion detection

Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) have been investigated for many years and the field has matured. Nevertheless, there are still important challenges, e.g., how an IDS can detect new and complex distributed attacks. To tackle these problems, we propose a distributed Reinforcement Learning (RL) approach in a hierarchical architecture of network sensor agents. Each network sensor agent learns to interpret local state observations, and communicates them to a central agent higher up in the agent hierarchy. These central agents, in turn, learn to send signals up the hierarchy, based on the signals that they receive. Finally, the agent at the top of the hierarchy learns when to signal an intrusion alarm. We evaluate our approach in an abstract network domain.